Six months before the European elections, which will take place in June, the true or false sifts through the more or less founded beliefs around the European Union. The True or False Cell focuses in particular on this recurring accusation: are a majority of our laws imposed by Brussels?
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This is an old and recurring accusation. If we only take the last few years, several far-right elected officials but also some figures on the left have affirmed that 60 to 80% of our laws would come from the European Union. VSand argument is not used only by Eurosceptics, but also by Europhiles who think this demonstrates the importance of voting in the European elections.
A European impact to be put into perspective depending on the sector
Do 80% of our laws really come from Brussels? It is in reality significantly less, rather around 20 to 25% according to what several studies published in the 2010s have demonstrated. If these studies have not been updated, researchers at the time were looked at over a fairly long period: from 1986 to 2007. More than 20 years where the influence of the European Union was ultimately quite limited in the construction of French law, depending on the sector.
If we take, for example, agriculture, almost 40% of French laws are of European origin. This is linked in particular to the CAP, the common agricultural policy, where Brussels imposes more common rules. The environment and even the energy sector are also largely influenced by European legislation. On the other hand, the impact of the EU is much weaker, even marginal, in other areas such as education, housing, defense and even the civil service.
The origin of this myth attributed to Jacques Delors
The origin of this “false number” of 80% is attributed to Jacques Delors at the end of the 1980s. He was then president of the European Commission and he affirmed in a speech that by the year 2000, “80% of economic legislation will be of community origin”. VSThis statement was not a prediction, It was more of a prognosis… which turned out to be false. Mbut the sentence left its mark, and has since been regularly repeated and above all diverted.
